


Like Loving the Dead

by dreaming anti-architect (ennta)



Category: The Crow (1994)
Genre: Gen, Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-17
Updated: 2013-05-17
Packaged: 2017-12-12 03:13:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/806539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ennta/pseuds/dreaming%20anti-architect
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eric Draven's afterlife in fifteen sentences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like Loving the Dead

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warning for cutting, violence, mention of rape.

**I.**

For the rest of the world, the story begins with a bird painted in blood on a warehouse wall.

**II.**

For Eric, it begins with a question: If there is a bridge between corpse and ghost, how does God decide who crosses it?

**III.**

And if Eric builds a ladder of bones to the sky, will he find the woman he loved again in heaven?

**IV.**

He hunts for the men who took the only life that mattered; they took that life with savage pride Eric thinks he can never understand.

**V.**

He smiles, though - a real smile, not this one he has painted on - when they beg for his mercy.

**VI.**

One of the men puts up a chase, and the adrenaline is pleasing, the catch marked by a shock of crimson on wet grey stone.

**VII.**

Over and again Eric places the photographs in order, tracing a relationship, only now the last picture is not his bride-to-be in her gown, but an autopsy print he stole from a crime lab.

**VIII.**

He has leads on her killers; all vow silence, but everything can be broken violently, and tongues are easiest to shatter when they are frozen to ice.

**IX.**

Shadows have a logic all their own; he holds them to him like blankets.

**X.**

"She wasn't yours!" he screams once, kicking at the wall, wondering whether he is screaming at the man bleeding out near his feet or at the voice inside his head.

**XI.**

He wishes he had never shaken her blue eyes and shock of long hair into existence on the Polaroid.

**XII.**

If I'm dead, he wonders, blade to his forearm as his eyes lose focus, why am I not empty?

**XIII.**

If I'm dead, he concludes, blade splitting skin with pressure that makes him crush his lower lip between his teeth, I will not suffer my veins to run full.

**XIV.**

Loving, for her, was the catalyst to move beyond a dark and painful world into the afterlife; for him, it is only a reason to stay.

**XV.**

There are many steps between this loft and the cemetery:

Even fewer, though, between heaven and hell.


End file.
